As I've previously mentioned on here to distraction, I love history. A lot. So much that I can never decide which eras or geographical areas or cultures or themes to specialise in (something that will haunt me until the day I finally submit a satisfying PhD application, and probably beyond then until the very end of time.)

There are particular places and times, though, that my brain keeps coming back to, feverishly, at inconvenient moments, and I spend a rash of money on books and neglect to sleep, and then it subsides again and I fall back in love with something else.

One of these is pre-Islamic Arabia. Oh my god, I am so desperately and utterly thrilled by societies, cultures, religion, kingdoms, life, in the pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula. I always have been, but it was particularly stoked by a visiting exhibition I saw at the Louvre in 2010. It was a truly stunning exhibition called Roads of Arabia: Archaeology and History of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, full of artefacts that for the most part had never left Saudi Arabia before, and about two-thirds of which were from the pre-Islamic period. Christ, the paragraphs and paragraphs I could write about that exhibition. But I'll keep it succinct, so I can move on to the point of this entry.

Here is the impression I got from that exhibition and its accompanying literature (an entirely amateur impression, and I would love to hear from anyone who knows more than I do): the pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula was, for thousands of years, the setting for the flourishing and decline of a dizzying range of kingdoms, cultures, societies, and languages, about most of which very little is known. There are glimpses: enormous sandstone statues of kings, five-thousand-year-old figurines, tablets carved with inscriptions in Old North Arabian (a group of closely related languages which are either related to or evolved to become, the Classical Arabic of the Qur'an - not sure which), fragments that historians have studied and used to posit histories for rising and falling kingdoms over thousands of years.  That said, I have never formally studied this enormous period of history, and there's a lot I don't know and many sources I'm not familiar with, including extant medieval copies of non-surviving ancient documents, recordings of pre-Islamic poetry by Islamic scholars, and Greek and Roman sources. Plus, there are brilliant historians from the region whose work I need to read, such as the truly awesome Dr Hatoon al-Fassi, a historian based at King Saud University, who has argued that women in Nabatea (a pre-Islamic Arabian kingdom) had, in many ways, more rights than in today's Saudi Arabia, and who is a generally badass activist for women's rights today. (Check out this article which has more on her scholarship: Saudi scholar finds ancient women's rights.)

Ok, here at last is the reason for this entry.

God how I ramble. ¬_¬ . Sorry.
Ok, I'm not.

So as I was saying before, I was reading that in pre-Islamic Arabia, Old North Arabian languages co-existed with the language which became Classical Arabic (or themselves evolved into Classical Arabic, my shoddy internet reading is not clear on this point! - which probably means scholars don't agree...? or that I should spend money on some books :/). However I also read that there was a distinct group of languages called Old South Arabian, which were descended from a different branch of Semitic to Old North Arabian / Arabic, and were spoken in the south of the peninsula. The general consensus seems to say that they died out, especially after Arabic became the dominant language across the peninsula (though I wouldn't be surprised if there are scholars who challenge this). I had read this before today, but guess what I read today that I had never read before?! :D.

There is a language family still in existence today which is descended from the same branch of Semtic as Old South Arabian, i.e. distinct from Arabic, i.e. a survivor of the language group that existed in the southern Arabian peninsula before Arabic became dominant!

According to that same, current, general consensus, this language family, named Modern South Arabian, is not directly descended from Old South Arabian, but it's definitely considered to be a cousin, i.e. from the same branch of Semitic as it, a relation of the languages spoken in the southern societies of the pre-Islamic peninsula! According to Ethnologue, Modern South Arabian languages are all minority languages, and many are seriously endangered. Mehri, spoken in Yemen, Kuwait and Oman is estimated to have135,800 speakers. Soqotri, spoken on islands off the coast of Yemen, 64,000 speakers. However Hobyót, spoken in Oman and Yemen, only has 100 speakers D: D: . (All stats from Ethnologue). There are others, at varying levels of endangerment, more endangered by the fact that many of them are only spoken languages, their speakers writing and reading only in Arabic.

I would love love love to learn more about these languages, about the cultures and lives and societies of the people who speak them.

Does anyone come from a relevant cultural/linguistic background they wouldn't mind talking with me about? Has anyone studied these languages/histories/cultures or travelled in these regions / does anyone have any books recs? Anyone else interested in these subjects?

God, I love this world, and the sheer breadth and variety of every last tale and tongue of every culture the migrations of our species have ever produced.

<3 

I'm thinking of taking up photography.

My parents first met on the day of their arranged wedding, in the early 1970s. They were never happy, not for a single day of their marriage. My mother was very much in love with my father for many, many years, believing so much in the ideal of a happy home, and being so invested in the idea of her role as a Bengali wife and mother hen to a happy Bengali household. Alas, my father never learned how to love another human being, and so never reciprocated, not even with kindness. They were never happy, not for one day.

A couple of years ago I was covertly rifling through my father's closet (long story), and found a photo album I had never seen before. It was full of mesmerising photos of the early days of my parents' marriage; their friends, their home, the apple trees in the garden, the garish 70s carpet. Looking through every one of these snapshots I knew that at the moment it was taken, no matter how many jolly friends it showed, no matter how much she was smiling, my mother was crushingly unhappy.

And then I came to one in particular.

In it, my parents are sitting next to each other on the back steps of their house, my father with a swept-across 70s fringe, looking almost dashing, and my mother, beautiful as ever. They're leaning into each other, laughing. I know for a fact that they were only laughing because a friend told them to smile for the camera, but somehow that friend captured what looks like the most intimate, natural moment between two people in love, sharing a private joke on the steps of their house. The effect is heightened by the fact that it was a gorgeous day; somehow the particular colour of the sun that day gives the picture a warm, happy glow. It's the most beautiful photograph I have ever seen. The expressions on their faces make them seem so utterly in love. I have never seen my parents look at each other like that.

That photograph is a lie, but it's a beautiful one. And while looking at it should make me sad, knowing just how much of a lie it is, in fact it just makes me ridiculously happy, because it's a window on to a universe (however imaginary) in which on that day, my parents were in love, my mother was happy, and my dashingly handsome father was a good man.

I'm thinking of taking up photography.

Where do I go to make flirtatious eyes at expensive cameras? The internet knows.

The other day I came across this lovely version of Yeats' The Stolen Child, set to music and sung by Loreena McKennitt. I don't know her music too well, but she has apparently also sung Tennyson, Blake and Shakespeare. Her voice is strangely delicate and powerful at the same time, and I love the poem so very much.



For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

This is a really hard entry to write, as for the past ten days, since the events mentioned in the last post, I've been hiding from most of the world, to the point where I've only been *outside* once, to engage the services of a professional therapist, yaaay! I usually freak out for a few days after my fainting comes back, but this time it was so bad that I sunk to what is technically known as Rock Bottom (TM). The rockest bottom I have ever been at. And if the tone of this entry thusfar is more sprightly than the usual tone of my Serious Entries, it's because after crying at the therapist, finally resolving to Do Something About my condition, realising that it isn't something to be ashamed of (still working on that one), getting the name of an amazing-sounding specialist who deals with this exact thing, getting some more paid work, and starting to reconnect with my friends, I feel like things have turned a corner. I feel more like a real person again!

When I was 18, I blogged almost every day (on a rickety old page full of fail and embarassment in an elusive corner of the internet that no one from my current life will ever find :P). I used to blog constantly about everything that I was passionate about, about everything that moved me,  about writing, politics, feminism, music, and other stuff (like sex, which I was super-repressed about ^_^), and it helped me enormously - to give shape to my world, to make sense of things. I miss it. The way I've been feeling lately, any urge to read anything longer than a news article or write anything that isn't a five minute burst of depression has drained out of me. And more than anything, that makes me feel empty, and less like myself. So those are my only resolutions. To start reading books again, and to write a bit every day, on any subject that I care about. Usually I'm obssessive and anal about resolutions; I write long complicated lists with sub-clauses and time-frames, resolve to be better, cleverer, nicer, more skilled at a million things, but the way this year has started I can't face the thought of anything other than 'Read and Write, Yo!'.

If I owe you communication, I promise you will get it within the week. If you've made resolutions of your own, I wish you so much luck and gumption and courage and whatever else you need for them. Have an awesome January, everyone. <3

Yesterday, on the first day of the year, I had one of the worst fainting attacks I've ever had. I won't recount the utter wasted horror of last night, spending six hours in the emergency room, the ten millionth ECG of the last 2 years, my mum and Pete not getting to bed until 6am, as thinking about it depresses me. This an entry about something one of the paramedics who came to our house said.

I've had to use the services of a quite a few paramedics in the last two years. As far as I can remember them (I don't always come round straight away, even when I appear to be sitting up and talking), they have all been absolutely wonderful - reassuring, kind, professional, just exactly what I need when I wake up feeling disorientated, sick and terrified. Last night's paramedics were no exception. They were exceptionally lovely, and I'm so, so glad (and lucky) that this country provides their services to me for free (well, in return for taxes). After I regained consciousness fully they were doing a few checks on me to make sure my heart was ok, to make sure I hadn't bitten myself, all the usual stuff. And they were also doing their best to keep my spirits up, making gentle jokes and chirpy conversation. When I felt a bit better I joined in with them, and at one point, the topic of the NHS changes came up. I made some jokey comment like "ah, the privatisation of the NHS", as a light-hearted response to something one of them said. Immediately he shook his head, looking really anxious, and said

"they're already bringing in a lot of private ambulance companies with their own staff, and they don't go through as much as training as we do."

D:

He seemed really concerned about the situation, and was genuinely worried that the professionalism and quality of NHS paramedics was going down because of this disparity in the training that private ambulance employees receive.

The guy had no agenda, it's not like his own personal job was threatened, so he had no reason to say that unless he had seen it himself. 

And that's... terrifying. There've been so many opinions on the NHS changes flying around in the public domain. Personally I have some serious problems with them, but I've never had to face up to the reality of them on a personal level (general good health privilege, I guess). But last night, hearing the paramedic say that, as a bye the bye, with that look of genuine worry on his face, frightened me. Not just for me (although that too), but for everyone who relies on the emergency services far more than I do, and for anyone who might need them out of the blue. We all deserve better.

There's something magical about the end of summer. Summer is a suffocating bore which makes me slow and sleepy and lazy and sad. And when it ends, the cold and orange and damp of autumn flows back into the world; the air kicks back and leaves crackle and whirl, and everything looks beautiful and full of possibility, and I feel like me again. I am a Discworld troll; my brain works best at low temperatures, and going for bracing walks in the glittering cold is one of the greatest pleasures I can think of. 

This witchy-ripe season yields a lot for me, including but not limited to favourite weathers, favourite vegetables, my birthday, that time of year when it's finally ok to start getting excited about Christmas, and the occasional wondrousness of Hallowe'en. Some years I don't feel like doing much more on that night that reading in a gloomily-lit garrett, but this year I ventured outdoors, and it was kind of wonderful. So here's a little tale of what amagiclantern and I did on Hallowe'en, which included accidentally stumbling onto that wee tent-based protest they've mentioned once or twice on the news. 

( An account of a rather wonderful Hallowe'en, with bonus thoughts on Occupy London! )

Nights like that make me gladder than the gladdest glad thing that I moved to London. <3 

Sometimes, I feel deeply, unutterably hideous by the standards and criteria of our culture; there are days when I cannot look in the mirror without seeing a monstrously monstrous monster, every blemish, freckle and (I suspect) cancerous mole, every unusually visible hair or unruly not-quite-fringe or untamed pot belly or weirdly large nipple or unmanicured fingernail coalescing into a contemptible soup of WHAT'S THAT COMING OVER THE HILL I WOULDN'T WOULD YOU HELL NO.

But the funny thing is, living by the sea makes this feeling go away. 'Cause if it weren't for the incessant chatter and unprompted opinionising of the arsehole totems of popular culture and thought insisting on specifying how we should and shouldn't look, what naturally occurring body-things are disgusting and which are "cute", and what we can (and should) all do to squash ourselves into that very tiny box of acceptability, I would have no problem with the way I look - underneath it all I like me and my bits and my face and my weirdly large nipples (last mention I swear ¬_¬). So why does living by the sea filter out, nay, *smash* the vacuous shit that makes me hate myself?

Because these miles of foam-freckled coast and horizons that lead to France make me bubble and boil with wanderlust, with restless feet, with overwhelming joy, and for reasons beyond my ken make it feel ok to be a monster - a great teeth-flashing ocean-monster-thing bound for discovery, for the edges of the map, for unnamed islands on storm-kicked tides.

The sea makes me remember that I would rather be that than almost anything in the world, and particularly than a false squashed thing in a box, with all my rough edges pared away to make me more toothless or easier to accept. That the things I truly want and care about in this rare and finite life have nothing (and I mean, *nothing*) to do with the way I look. It makes me remember that this planet is large and complex and full of storms, (and, um, algae and fish, to take the metaphor to its logical conclusion...) and while I am here I get to seek out its wonders and learn its tides (and, um, eat stray sunbathers on deserted beaches, to take the metaphor to its-LOLZ I WILL EAT YOU AFTER I EAT YOUR CHILDREN), and telling me I am ugly is so utterly *meaningless* that all I have to do is bare my teeth at you and keep swimming.

Oh, how I wish I could be that monstrously invincible all the time. Stray sunbathers would never be safe.

...Of course the sea can also be monstrous in a horrendous way, as it has been of late. Not that kind of monster kthx. :(

 It's 4.12am on the 1st of January 2011 (that futuristic-sounding year we couldn't possibly have arrived at, not when I remember '97 turning to '98 with such unsettling clarity). I just got home. My feet are tingling with ridiculous moves, shivery steps towards tube stations, and the need to finally, stop, and be still. Ridiculous shapes-throwing in a blary, flashy nightspot packed with gorgeous fools? Check. Auld Lang Syne with people I love? Check. On the verge of tears during aforementioned Burnsery? Check (Seas between us broad have roared? So beautiful it merits tears). Alcopops, grinding, increasingly raucous "woo!"s... all so cliched and all so goddamn necessary sometimes. I feel great. This is why, sometimes, I make myself put on some dancing shoes, and go to places I hate with people I love (with obligatory moaning about nightclubs in the queue of course). Because afterwards, when it comes out right, I feel like I've had a fucking detox. A detox filled with alcohol and yelling and the turn of a year, and bodies moving for the sake of it, full of electricity and life and not giving a fuck. and And then, just bliss. 

Happy New Year, everyone. I warmly wish you the best January that you could possibly imagine having (lets take it one month at a time - resolutions and hopes are so daunting otherwise, y'know?).